Shops like this one in Joburg remind me of Wal-Mart where you can buy yogurt, a hamster, and a gun, but here they really do nix all the stuff in between. Would you like to buy a microwave or a hair extension? The art of selling whatever you can get your hands on… They should pair up with the lady down my block in Chinatown who sets up a shopping cart on the sidewalk and sells tofu and bras. Another winning combo! The Dadaists would love them haha.

I’m excited to head out to Johannesburg next week to be a part of Global Studio for the third year! While I was getting my Masters degree in urban planning at Columbia University, I had the opportunity to participate in the program, where international interdisciplinary students, academics, and professionals come together to collaborate on community-based projects. Informed by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the program promotes forms of education and practice that will benefit under-served communities and facilitate bottom-up, collaborative partnerships. I love the program so much that I’m a bonafide lifer and help guide work and develop materials as a Project Associate.

While the month-long program has moved to different cities each year in the past, this year we’ll be returning to Johannesburg, South Africa again to continue various projects on housing, the environment, the arts, and information. We’ll be continuing our collaborative work with residents in Diepsloot (“DEEP-sloot”), a northern township that is one of the fastest growing areas in the City. There are around 100,000 residents, many live in shacks, and access to basic services like sewage and running water are limited. After talking with residents, community groups, and local government last year, a team developed around the topic of information. There is a strong local desire to improve information-sharing within the community.

Last year we conducted a community survey to learn more about how people currently get their information and how they would like to receive information. Based on 225 responses, 88% of people read newspapers, 84% own radios, and both mediums were wanted as news sources at the local scale. Since then, local resident Bongani Baloyi formed a non-profit organization called Diepsloot Community News that seeks to be an umbrella organization for local communication. The creation of DCN was instigated by an incident in June 2007 when a child went missing in Diepsloot. While she was found safely two days later only a few blocks from her home, the episode brought to light the lack of comprehensive communication infrastructure in Diepsloot.

This is where we are as we begin our program this year. There’s a lot of potential in many mediums, including a newspaper, radio station, SMS cell phone technology, and community chalkboards. Project development will really take more shape once we’re on the ground collaborating with Diepsloot Community News and discussing needs and interests with community members. It will also depend on the skills of the team, whose backgrounds will mostly be in architecture and urban planning. In the end, we hope to learn a lot from the people in Diepsloot and help them develop a better information-sharing system to facilitate transparency and harness the great amount of local knowledge and resources within the community.

Stacks of flattened boxes on Mott Street, Chinatown. Someone would win a prize if they came up with a less waste-producing way of delivering produce… I’m thinking a giant catapult…

Chinatown is a land of good food, colorful shops, and fresh produce. It is also a land of about three trees in a ten-block radius. The sidewalks may already be packed with produce-unloading delivery boys and boxy, bag-toting Chinese ladies, but we’ll gladly make way for some quaint, tree-lined street action. To jump-start the Great Chinatown Tree-Planting Movement I pulled out the temporary spray-chalk and started marking some choice spots on the sidewalks for the City to plop some green ones.

It just so happens that April is MillionTreesNYC Month, highlighting the cool new program initiated by PlaNYC that makes it easy for residents to get involved in tree-planting good times. Shooting for one million new city trees in the next decade, the program gives hope to the leafless sidewalks of Chinatown that yearn to be charmingly lined with more than garbage bags. We call those black bushes! Please give us trees.

Close enough?

OMG, these Chinese shorts are stroking out!

When I was little I used to think that “pretty” was spelled “pritty” because that’s how it was written on my fashion sweater from my Taiwanese grandma. Little did I know that Asian products are the foulest place to learn English spelling and grammar. The *essence* of America talk is enough. Then it’s relly orkay if is not quite rite. Is horse cake Tuessday cool still!

Behold the products of western love and post-WWII America-worship. Clothes, bags, stores, and snacks are named for some slaughtered English phrase to be cooler or more credible. It’s a little piece of the exotic west printed on a pencil case, kind of like Chinese characters tattoo’d on a white guy. Who’s safer there…

Well I love me some good Engrish. It makes me laugh long time. If you’re not near any Chinatown shorts, you can go to Engrish.com to get your fix of the English language remixed by my yellow peoples. They either don’t get it quite right (”No smorking”), do their own better take (”Little grass is having rest, please dont disturb them”), or they’re in some other place (”Grandpa Fuckin Spaceshuttle”). Good times for everyone, everywhore.

Wow. That’s the way we do business-casual on Canal Street.

I’m surprised this sign hasn’t been egged, or better yet, tagged and graffiti’d… A few months after 11 Spring Street had its big street art blowout, the scaffolding went up and then eventually this sign: “Three Unique Residences Starting At $6,700,000.” We knew this was coming, but I didn’t think they’d flaunt it. Note the writing out of every zero (and the size of the building that will be divided into a mere three units). Rich dork butts. To gawk at more million-dollar apartments and everything else that’s for sale, check out streeteasy.com, my favorite source for NYC real estate porn.

I just noticed this old flyer for a local parade celebrating the great combo that is Little Italy and Chinatown. Headshots at the bottom of the flyer announce appearances by Italian-American celebrities Tony “Paulie” Sirico from The Sopranos, Lou Christie from who-knows-what, Cristina Fontanelli from ditto, and that Chinese-American personality we know and love - “Lion.” Was Margaret Cho not available? Oh wait, crap, she’s Korean-American… Ummm how about B.D. Wong? Really? Lion?… Is that all we got?…

Walking along Bowery can be a bit on the gray side with all its big industrial appliance stores. But that all changes with Century Kitchen & Equipment’s sign at 216 Bowery. Come into our magical rainbow world of three-burner countertop ranges and stainless steel dough roller machines!